Primary Pinwheels A'Plenty

I'm so excited to share some photos of my current work-in-progress. This is my first quilt that I am doing without following a pattern (eek!). If I am feeling ambitious, I may just write up my own pattern when I'm done!

I had these two beautiful charm packs by Moda (Wee Folks & A Breath of Avignon) that happened to coordinate with some great primary colors. I've been meaning to start a baby quilt for my cousin's baby, who we just found out will be a girl!

So--here are some in-progress highlights from my first pinwheel adventure.

I started with 5" charms to make 4 half square triangles (HSTs). I tried out a new method, which I highly recommend. You can check it out here!

Here is my pieced layout of the center quilt top, along with my sous-quilter, Bentley. I ended up switching a few pinwheels around before sewing the whole top together.

Here's part of the finished quilt top, including borders. I had a lot of help from the Robert Kaufman Quilt Calculator app for iPhone and iPad with determining my yardage, etc for my backing, border, and binding. A must have, if I do say so!

I'm just getting into free motion quilting, and this is one of my first quilts completely that will be completely quilted freely. Thoughts?

I am so excited about the backing I found for this quilt. I was originally going to pull a moda fabric from the front, but to be honest, Joann;s was having a huge sale and I was not patient enough to drive to Fabric Shack or order online. My cousin Lindsey and I have a special connection with cherries...they are our 'thing'. Quick story: in 2005-ish, we took a family trip to Italy and Lindsey came along. I could tell you lots of stories about our culinary adventures challenges, since Linny is a very picky eater and will not eat cheese, fish, eggs. Well, on a hungry day in Calabria (a very southern beach town where my family is from), she and I stumbled across a man selling cherries from the back of a cart. Needless to say, we bought a ridiculously large amount of cherries (thanks to the mysteries of the metric system) and stuffed ourselves. We went back every day for the rest of the vacation for our cherry gorge. It was great. Anyway, cherries have been our thing ever since! I think she is going to love this cherry pinwheel quilt, since it will be now be something we can share with the new little one. 

Stay tuned for more Primary Pinwheel updates; I'm hoping to have this one quilted by the end of the weekend!

blog makeover!

You may have noticed that I've been doing some housekeeping! Now that I am graduated and have a big girl job, I wanted to make sure my blog was up to date and accurate. The domain name has changed, so please bookmark http://amandasgreatidea.blogspot.com/
I'm hoping to go in a crafty direction these days with the blog, so stay tuned for some special quilting posts.
So yes, blogosphere, she's baaack. :)

Oh, Hi, yo.

Things I love about Ohio:
-Christopher!
-Dog parks
-Smiling faces everywhere we go
-Local eggs
-Local honey
-Local produce
-Local, local, local!
-Corn fields
-An extra hour of sunlight
-Beautiful sunsets
-No light pollution for star gazing
-Inexpensive fresh, produce. (Did I mention it's all local??)
-Farms
-Farm markets
-Quilt stores
-Metroparks
-Bike paths

Things That I Could Do Without in Ohio:
-Humidity
-You're Going to Hell Billboards
-John Boehner
-The Heartbeat Bill
-Long commutes to work
-Teeth optional towns
-Highly commercialized food establishments

So far, so good! :)

sensational summer | Day 3

part one | self

awake

part two | senses

smell. lilies and rain.

sensational summer | Day 2

part one | self

miss frizzle.

part two | senses

touch. dew drip drop.

sensational summer | Day 1

part one | self

jet lag. feeling foggy.

part two | senses

sight. seeking clarity.

...and so begins my photo project! i will be documenting two photos every day for the entire season. one will be a variation on self-portrait, while the other will be an exploration of the five senses.

summer.

happy first day of summer! it's my first full day without anything on my schedule, and i'm itching already for something extra. i feel the need to be inspired and create. it's interesting how my mind maintains this inverse relationship of structure and creativity. now that the structure is gone, my creative juices want to start flowing!
a few people have suggested that i move forward with photography, and i honestly love the idea. i have a fairly new camera that i am in love with, and it would be a pretty low-cost project, seeing that i have the tools already. but what to do? a simple googling of 'photography projects' has helped my narrow things down. here are some ideas for photo projects that i'm thinking about.
-365 project: pretty self explanatory. a picture a day for a year. could be of myself or of a theme. i also thought of making this less daunting by starting with summer only, since this is the first day of summer.
-A-Z project: photographing things that begin with letters of the alphabet or that look like letters of the alphabet
-Pick-a-something: spend a day photographing all of one thing, or all one color

I'll probably come up with my own project that's a hodge podge of those suggestions. i'd like to have a single photo or photo set for every day of the summer, either with a big overarching thing, or a theme per day. suggestions??